4. Trends and Specific Cases

The growing importance of civil law contracts as well as increasingly more common use, at least at the statistical level, of temporary employment, reflects a broader tendency among some employers to move away from the employment relationship in favour of more flexible arrangements. The legislator has responded to this trend along two parallel tracks:

The first track consists of extending certain minimum standards to persons performing work under civil law contracts, without formally reclassifying those contracts as employment. Key examples include: the minimum hourly rate applicable to contracts of mandate and contracts for the provision of services, certain health and safety duties towards contractors, enrolment in the Employee Capital Plans (PPK) for contractors subject to social insurance on pension and disability grounds, access to ZUS sickness and maternity benefits for contractors who opt into voluntary sickness insurance.

The second track consists of strengthening enforcement. The most significant development in this respect is the amendment to the Act on the State Labour Inspectorate, which enters into force on 8 July 2026 and grants labour inspectors the power to establish the existence of an employment relationship by means of an administrative decision, without the need to initiate court proceedings. This significantly lowers the procedural barriers to reclassification and is expected to increase the frequency of PIP inspections focused on contractor classification.